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Server hosting is an important part of every multiplayer game, and a critical component of Venice Unleashed.

Up until recently, hosting a Venice Unleashed server required a Windows 7 / Windows Server 2008 R2 (or newer) host, along with several other third-party dependencies. However, we understand that not everyone can afford a Windows Server license (and the hardware to run it), and we therefore extended our efforts to make Venice Unleashed Dedicated Servers usable on more platforms…

One of the main features of Venice Unleashed is the re-introduction of the Spectator feature to the game.

As previously demonstrated, DICE seems to have originally planned to include spectator in the game, but apparently the feature was never finished and therefore never featured in the final version of the game.

Our goal is to enable our users to take advantage of that feature, and also extend it to provide you with a fully functional Spectator mode for Battlefield 3.

In the previous Modding in VU post, we talked about the VeniceEXT extension system, and how it will empower modders and content-creators with the ability to create awesome and unique modifications for Battlefield 3.

But VeniceEXT isn’t the only tool we will be providing to our community for modifying and tailoring the gaming experience to their needs.

In this blog post we will talk about Rime (previously known as IceEditor), and how with it (in conjunction with VeniceEXT), modders and content-creators will be able to give the game a whole new aura, with limitless new possibilities.

Some of you may have thought that Venice Unleashed is dead, since it has been a while since we last posted a progress report. However, we are glad to inform you that this is not the case.

During the past month, we have worked tirelessly to make Venice Unleashed better and more complete than ever, and today we have some great and exciting news for you, that will help define the future of this project!

For the past week we have been working on the final missing feature of the client-dedi, RCON.

For those of you who don’t what RCON is, it is a protocol that allows you to remotely manage your server, using third party tools like ProCon.

RCON is extremely handy, as it allows you to perform several server-side actions, like changing the active map, managing (kicking/banning) players, and modifying various other parameters of the dedicated server.

Like we mentioned in the ‘Server Hosting in VU’ blog post, some important game features are missing from the vanilla client when running in server mode. During the past two weeks, we have been working on re-implementing some of those features in order to be able to provide you with a fully functional and playable game.

One of the main (and most important) missing features was the complete absence of all capture point logic…

As we have demonstrated before, Venice Unleashed features a custom UI system, which allows us to provide you with additional in-game features (like a main menu, a server browser, custom loading screens, etc.), and also allows modders to give a unique identity to they mods by customizing the in-game UI.

But how does this work you may ask?
Do you need to have advanced ActionScript/Flash skills to develop custom HUD elements for VU?